-
The Berlin airlift was an operation from the United State that supplied a massive amount of food and other vital goods to the citizens of West Berlin. This was because the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail roads to and from West Berlin. The U.S. government called for a direct military response but they did not want to cause WWIII. -
NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and it was an alliance between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Any attack on one of the nations would be considered an attack on all of them. -
The Warsaw Pact is a treaty signed in Warsaw Poland that included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. The Warsaw Pact pledged to defend each other if an outside force attacked one. The Soviet Union formed this alliance to respond to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). -
The sputnik was the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. It was launched on October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union. The united states interpreted the launch of the sputnik as a threat to the United States' national security. -
A huge wall that isolated West Berlin. It was supposed to keep Western ideas out of Communist Eastern Germany but mostly served to keep Eastern Germans from going to West Berlin. -
The Cuban missile crisis occurred when the Soviet Union started to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The United States would not allow this. After 13 days and secret negotiation, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles. -
The space race with the Soviet Union started when the Soviet Union put Sputnik in space. On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first humans ever to land on the moon -
The border between East and West Germany was opened on November 9, 1989, because of an anti-government protest in East Germany. Germans rushed to the wall. They took it done and also had a huge street party. Berlin was united for the first time since 1945.